Run-time mechanisms for property preservation in high-integrity real-time systems

Classical real-time kernels tend to leave to the application level the burden of policing those stipulations that the designer deems crucial to warrant the correct operation of the system. In fact, in the general case, there exist forms of reflective computing at application level that may be happy with that arrangement. Where “continuity of proof” and “preservation of properties” are central to the development paradigm instead permissive kernels are arguably inferior to proactive execution platforms which are capable of: (i) policing the critical stipulations; and (ii) preventing their violations at run time. In this short paper we illustrate some constructive principles of an execution environment that follows the latter paradigm.